Moving beyond a year of struggle in the Vashon-Maury Island Community Council, a group of us Island activists (old and new) is launching a new All Island Forum this fall.

We believe there is a significant yearning among public-minded citizens on the Island for a place where people will be free to speak, committed to listen and intent on learning with and from each other about the real issues that we need to address. Because the community council has not been able and still seems currently unable to readily meet this need, we want to provide an alternative.

Simply put, our purpose is to launch a collaborative, participatory and effective All Island Forum for community dialogue and action. We seek clarity on issues, consensus on decisions and community participation in solutions — focusing on a few key topics that call for significant agreement among Islanders.

We know that this simple intention is fraught with the complexity of Island history and all of its challenges and distractions. Motivated by our own irrepressible instincts for true and commonsensical democracy, we are pressing ahead.

We have been told by some that we must immediately try to compete with and supplant the community council. We have been told by others that we must forswear ever trying to replace the council in any way. We choose to start off in neither of these directions. Rather we simply want to build a safe, reliable and substantive venue for dialogue and action for Islanders, something we have not had recently. The quality of our collective efforts and our subsequent successes and failures will determine what role the All Island Forum may eventually play.

We invite those who want to come together face-to-face to join us and tackle those critical issues that we must address collectively, including, for example, water policy, economic and job development, health care and the community safety net. Together we believe that we can create common ground and a facilitated process for the kind of respectful give-and-take that too often has been missing from both our local and national political arenas.

Our meetings and forums will be guided both by the presence of affirmative principles and the absence of the out-of-date bylaws and Roberts’ Rules of Order that have strangled the VMICC. For example, our ground rules call for participants to embrace our purpose, seek common ground in creative ways, deal with disagreements openly and fairly and focus on what really matters. The elimination of rigid by-laws and rules of order will ensure that we will not get caught up in crippling parliamentary wrangling.

As with any political policy body, we cannot guarantee an easy and conflict-free path ahead. What we can offer is a new and carefully crafted opportunity to draw on the best in all of us to address issues and accomplish far more than we have in the last year. We will bring an original structure, shared responsibility and leadership and clear ways of working to this opportunity. Over time we will steadily learn from our collective experiences and adapt to make these forums serve all of us who join in this effort.

If you are intrigued by this possibility, we will hold our next monthly meeting on Thursday, Sept. 22, and are planning our first major All Island Forum on Thursday, Oct. 27. Our first choice in both these meetings is to focus on water policy questions and opportunities that are so crucial to our common future.

— John Runyan is a long-time Islander and a trained facilitator active in the All Island Forum.

The All Island Forum’s next planning meeting is 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 22, at the Land Trust Building. Its first major forum will be from 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 27, at the Open Space for Arts & Community.